If you’re a frequent to heavy user of the iPad then you’re very likely to have at least some occasions where you need to login to an online site. Sometimes this may happen when you’re connecting via a public WiFi network. It’s never a great feeling to be entering login information to a bank site or somewhere like Paypal or Amazon or similar sites when you know you’re on an insecure connection.

1Password, the superb password manager app for the iPad, iPhone, and Mac and Windows PCs, has a great solution for these situations – and any others where you want a secure, fast way to login to an important site.

You can use their inline browser to visit the site you need to login to and have your login details autofilled for you – with no typing required. Here’s how:

– You need to have the 1Password app installed for starters of course. You can purchase 1Password for iPad for $9.99, or 1Password Pro, which will run on both iPad and iPhone, for $14.99. 1Password was one of our picks for Best iPad Apps of 2011 and you won’t find a better or more secure password app for the iPad.

– Once you have the app installed, you can login securely via any of your items located in the Logins section of the app. So open the app and tap on the Logins section in the left sidebar.

– Then tap on the individual entry for the site you want to login to, on the right-hand side list.

– Just below the item title you’ll see the website field. To the right of the URL there is a right facing arrow. Tap on that to open the site in 1Password’s inline browser – as indicated on my entry for Amazon.com:

– When the site opens tap on its login or sign-in link, and 1Password should automatically fill in your login credentials (username and password) for you. If it doesn’t, you can give it a nudge by tapping on the world icon towards the top right of the 1Password browser’s toolbar. It should then popup a login item for the site you’re on – tap that and your credentials will be entered.

That’s it. I’ve tested this out with logging in to Amazon, Dropbox, everythingiCafe (my favorite iOS forum) and a few others. It works like a charm and is fast and pleasing to use – as you’re doing everything in one app.

Thanks to David Chartier at the 1Password developers’ Agile Blog for sharing this very cool tip. Here’s some background from that blog post on this feature:

To cut to the chase, we can’t add our spiffy little 1Password button to Mobile Safari because Apple isn’t really feeling the extension vibe on iOS just yet. Have you noticed how you can’t add buttons for Evernote, Instapaper, or any of the other neat tools you can find in the desktop Safari Extensions Gallery? Fortunately, constraint breeds innovation. Since we can’t bring 1Password to Mobile Safari on iPhone and iPad yet, our masterful developer ninjas decided to bring some Safari to 1Password.

If you need to log into a site on your iPhone or iPad, you can, of course:

• manually type the site URL into Mobile Safari
• double-tap your Home button to switch to 1Password
• find the Login item
• tap the password, then tap copy
• double-tap your Home button again to switch back to Safari
• paste the password
• go on about your way

Or you could save yourself some tapping and switching and swiping and just tap the URL of your Login item. Yeah, you read that right: we built a browser right into 1Password for iPhone and iPad.

Happy secure iPad surfing.